The R package

R,
closely related to the commercial package S-Plus,
is the largest and most comprehensive public domain statistical
computing environment. It provides a coherent, flexible
programming environment for data analysis, applied mathematics,
statistical analysis, and graphics. Unlike some menu-drived
statistical packages, the user interacts with R with a C-like command
language with pop-up graphical windows. The core R package is
enhanced by several hundred user-supplied add-on packages in the Comprehensive R
Archive Network
(CRAN) and the Omegahat
Project
for Statistical Computing. Binary executables and
open source
codes for Linux, Windows and MacOS can be downloaded for instant
use. R has extensive documentation.
Here we list some of its capabilities that may be of interest to the
physical scientist.